Carol Marin of the Chicago Sun Times: Discontented Voters Could Go Green
Carol Marin is a big time political columnist for the Chicago Sun Times and is the political editor for the NBC-Chicago affiliate. She recently wrote a sweet article on the Illinois Green Party in her last column in the Sun Times. This is a pretty significant story considering Marin is well respected in the Chicago mainstream media.
Discontented Voters Could Go Green
“…In Chicago, according to Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Jim Allen, fully 5 percent of those who bothered to vote in the Democratic or Republican primaries didn’t check off any candidate for governor. Not even after the voting machine spit their ballot back out alerting them that they had left the office blank.
“Even with this alert system and even with this lively heated contest, more people took a pass on it than they did four years ago when it was Blagojevich vs. Edwin Eisendrath, a functional unknown,” Allen said.
Interestingly, that alert system was only triggered for statewide offices. So further on down the ballot, when it came to voting for president of the Cook County Board, voters received no electronic reminder to vote but seemed determined to do so anyway.
“The one office that got more voter participation than any other was Cook County Board president,” Allen said. “Only 3.9 percent of the voters did not make a choice.”
And the resounding choice was to throw Todd Stroger out and bring Toni Preckwinkle in.
So what does any of this say about the Greens for 2010?
That, like the beleaguered Scott Lee Cohen of momentary lieutenant governor fame, if they can hone their message and capitalize on the raging discontent in the electorate, they might be hosting a Green tea party of their own.”
In other Illinois news, Richard Winger of Ballot Access News is reporting that 5,501 voters pulled a Green Party in the last primary election two weeks ago. That’s an amazing increase from 2008 where close to 3,000 voters pulled a Green primary ballot.
Illinois held its 2010 primary on February 2. Although the State Board of Elections hasn’t released the official election returns yet, Green Party activists have collected data from the various counties and have calculated that over 5,501 voters chose a Green Party primary ballot. See the county-by-county breakdown here.
In 2008, the only other year the Green Party had a statewide primary, 3,014 Illinois voters chose a Green Party primary ballot. Before that, no party other than the two major parties had held a statewide primary since 1990 and 1988, when the Illinois Solidarity Party held one. In 1990, only 418 voters had chosen an Illinois Solidarity Party primary ballot, and in 1988, only 525 voters had chosen one.
Before that, there hadn’t been a statewide primary for a party other than the Democratic and Republican Parties since 1926, when the Progressive Party had one.
With Green candidate for Governor, Rich Whitney, running a hard campaign and gaining more mainstream media recognition, Whitney could pull off a surprise in November.
I will ask the same question I asked in the similar article about the Illinois Governor race from last week, how does Whitney plan to appeal to voters that fall into groups that traditional support the green party or lean closely to it. In particular independent voters that would be consider to be moderates or even leaning conservative, because with out these voters I dont see how Whitney can put together a winning plurality with out those voters.